I Quote from Tilly Pink:Multiple personality is a disorder, but there's the postmodern concept that we do not have a true self, we are made up of many selves. In the Fourth Way it is called "Many I's and we can prove (If we want to) that we are many I's. For me I know it is so, but you don't have to take my word for it. You can find out for yourself. In some of my dreams one I wants to be the one in charge, (Example: Being chairman of a club) but being strongly opposed. In physical life an I wants to do a task, but opposing I's find excuses why I should not do it. This I my opinion reflects in my dreams, like the one above, meaning for me there is Awareness behind my dreams.

Yes, there are awarenesses behind the dreams, but there are also awarenesses behind ones waking self too. Everyone has experienced sudden bursts of inspiration and they're just one's conscious mind coming in contact with one of one's unconscious selves. My own experiences confirm this at least for me. In sleep doing WILDs I've often had the experience of dozens of dreams running at once with me choosing one to enter. I've been beyond normal consciousness while awake and experienced true consciousness. There are literally hundreds of minds with separate: awareness; thoughts and emotions and all experiencing the perceptions, thoughts and emotions of each other simultaneously. Even though my conscious mind also experienced them all simultaneously I had to mind link with individual minds to experience more fully what they were, just like picking out a dream from many to enter. Our conscious mind is an illussion necessary to deal with the real world. Our real mind is greater than most have even imagined.

"There is only one God and his name is Death.And there is only one thing we say to death "not today"- Syrio Forel

There was a woman on "This Morning" yesterday who was talking about her multiple personality disorder. She had about twenty personalities (one of them being a four-year-old girl).

What I found interesting was the fact that the woman (the main personality) claimed to either fade out or suddenly see black whenever the others took over. She would then come to and find herself in unusual situations incompatible with her character. (No recollection of what she had done therefore she had not been conscious.)

However, whenever people spoke to these other personalities, they coherently responded. Everything about the emergent personalities indicated that they were conscious of external stimuli and were able to communicate intelligently with other people. Literally, you could say the woman had several people living "inside" her.

Strikingly, as a kid, before my parents got divorced and the atmosphere was pretty bad in the house, I had a blacking out episode once. I say black and felt like being suffocated. When I came to I was crying and didn't know why.

Now, I don't have a multiple personality disorder but I have a theory for what happened to me as a kid: My mind just might have concocted another personality to deal with a situation that I probably couldn't cope with (just the once).

I had been happily playing with my toys when darkness took over me. According to my mother, I began to scream and shout and repeatedly said, "I hate you."

Watching that woman describe her experiences seemed somewhat familiar. Before we can say that dream characters are conscious, we also need to consider the fact that sleepwalkers can perform complex actions whilst being unconscious. Our noodle is a tough one to crack. When we didn't have much intelligence, we relied on instinct to survive and there wasn't a lot of thinking. Not enough time. Perhaps a similar mechanism is still active within us today and ready to make us act impulsively and unconsciously for extended periods of time when the thinking neocortex appears to be inadequate in certain situations.

Of course, people are different and thus react differently to the same problems. Some break down, some find solutions, other lose it to allow another part of the mind to take over and somewhat handle it - or not handle it by expressing irrationality.

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"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

So perhaps the people we meet in dreams are other 'selves' or other 'I's.

It's not that far fetched actually. Since the brain can create the illusion of self that I consider 'me', it's capable of creating others for brief periods. I just tend to be the most dominant personality.

In a dream they are illusions, but then again, my own sense of self is an illusion too. In a way, I am no more real or less real than dream characters. I asked one once back in February. I asked her, "Are you a dream character?" She said, "Yes". I asked, "Am I a dream character". Again, she said, "Yes".

That's what I'm beginning to suspect, Hagart. What's more, I believe that we are also illusions. So who are we to say that dream characters are not conscious, or, in the least, representative of potential personalities?

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

It depends on how we define consciousness, and what awareness is. A plant is not conscious or self-aware, but it's still alive. It reacts to it's environment so it must be aware at the most basic, fundamental level.

Perhaps our subconscious is like a plant, following a process of cause and effect, sense and react. That is our basic primal self. Since our subconscious is the force that creates our dreams, perhaps there is a level of awareness behind the dream after all that is beyond our own awareness of it.

But that doesn't mean it's self-aware, the way 'I', ego sense of self identity feel in the dream. But it may be slightly aware. Aware of what though? I would say raw emotions. My subconscious wants one thing and one thing only: a state of happiness and bliss. It's an endorphin and serotonin junkie and they are 'sunshine' for it, and it doesn't know or care what I have to do in real life or in dreams to feed it.

I should ask more dream characters, or try and get in touch with the awareness behind the dream directly and ask what makes it happy and what I should do to appease it. If my subconscious is happy and free from anxiety, I will be happy too at a very deep level. Otherwise, we all just bury it deep down and try to ignore it and we are good at being in denial, but it always comes back in dreams when we let our guard down. Dreams and the awareness behind the dreams show us that something needs to be resolved and it's not content, and needs us, the ones in charge who make choices to resolve it.

(Of course it's debatable if we have any free will at all, but we do make conscious decisions beyond what our subconscious wants. Otherwise, we would all be sleep walking right now which is the way I imagine most unconscious life on Earth to live... just like plants. But even plants know where the sun is and will point themselves toward it).

Summerlander wrote:That's what I'm beginning to suspect, Hagart. What's more, I believe that we are also illusions. So who are we to say that dream characters are not conscious, or, in the least, representative of potential personalities?

Just as i had finished writing my response to the interview I went upstairs and had a thought. A dreamy thought. On the loo. Obviously. That's where all good thoughts happen. It was the classic Alice in Wonderland in the mirror maze experience. The big question that hit me was...'Do our multi-selves have selves?' Is there self within self? If so...this is never ending and ever expanding....? Cooooollll! Sounds a bit like the universe!! Dream characters...do they have a self? Is it separate to our self? No way - it can't be! So. Perhaps we all have multiple personality disorder. Which dream self ran away with it? My brother was schizophrenic. His dream characters took him way beyond a world that was acceptable to perceived reality. The only way he could deal with it (beyond prescription drugs) was to wake up! To understand he was in a dream. That it was ok for lights to appear from peoples eyes, to know that crows could talk to him, as he was dreaming. He woke up. In his waking dream. People say 'He's done so well!' Haha! He still sees light coming from peoples eyes, still hear's crows talking, it's just...now...he's lucid. He get's he's dreaming. errrr...sounds a bit like me when i'm asleep....

I admire him. Funnily enough he's a teacher of English language now. Years ago he was destined as a mental health affected bum.

I reckon if i was to ask my brother if their is an awareness behind the dream...he would say, 'Well, it would depend on who you asked...'

Who is in the mirror today? Moreover...who is reflected back? And even if you do recognise them...who is in their mirror?

TillyPink wrote:'Do our multi-selves have selves?' Is there self within self? If so...this is never ending and ever expanding....? Cooooollll! Sounds a bit like the universe!!

I think the universe is a fractal. It's very simple but creates infinitely complex designs and you can 'zoom in' forever and always see something new. But just like the Mandelbrot Set we may find smaller versions of the larger whole. Perhaps these other selves are just like that and there are an infinite number of possibilities, but when I wake up, I zoom out again.

Perhaps schizophrenia is not a disorder, but just something that needs to be controlled. Perhaps it's a higher state of consciousness. (It all depends on how you look at it).

I think the universe is a fractal. It's very simple but creates infinitely complex designs and you can 'zoom in' forever and always see something new. But just like the Mandelbrot Set we may find smaller versions of the larger whole. Perhaps these other selves are just like that and there are an infinite number of possibilities, but when I wake up, I zoom out again.

Perhaps schizophrenia is not a disorder, but just something that needs to be controlled. Perhaps it's a higher state of consciousness. (It all depends on how you look at it).

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Yup i love that. I really do think we are constantly regenerating - if the universe is - how can we not be? I mean, on a universal physical and mental level. We can not be static in terms of self. It would serve no purpose.

And yes, I've heard high grade Psychologists say the same about schizophrenia..equally i have heard some mental health physicians say differently....it just depends on who you want to listen to.

I was lucid last night and this was my first dream goal that came to mind. I fell in my own trap again and called out to the dream, "Is anybody there?" (Taking it literally again. It takes time to change our deep expectations). I started to feel like I was being watched and got paranoid. Just by me asking it, I myself became hyper aware and started to sense with more than just my vision. I bet if I had waited a Dream Character would have showed up, but I was getting spooked. (Therefore the dream character would have probably been scary and antagonistic anyway).

I quickly decided to do something else I never have before which was another LD goal of mine. From a standing position, I fell backward to see what would happen, thinking the dream scene would change. It went crazy as I fell and I felt like I was sinking deeper as I saw the surroundings start to replicate themselves over and over again into the distance for infinity. (Hard to describe). Then I closed my eyes for a few moments and opened them and I was in my bed but still lucid. I could just feel it in my head. I got up and continued dreaming from there with a higher state of awareness so it was more vivid.

The second thing I did doesn't have to do with this thread, but it happened right afterward and I thought is was interesting. Without changing the direction of this thread, on a side note, try that sometime. Falling backwards does some crazy things.